


there's so much energy in us

by raumdeuter



Series: light chasers [1]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Artificial Intelligence, Alternate Universe - Mecha Pilots, Alternate Universe - Space, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-20 07:30:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8241361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raumdeuter/pseuds/raumdeuter
Summary: He looks at the photograph again. The flight lieutenant isn’t smiling, but there’s a faint quirk to his lips, as if he’s a split second away from it, and his eyes--Miro peers closer--are a little mismatched, the left just a few shades bluer than the right.[Or, Miro is a mecha pilot on the run from the Federation of Interplanetary Frontiers and Alliances, and Thomas is the inexplicably defective AI interface he had no intention of installing.]





	1. bless the wakeless on their journey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kopfkino](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kopfkino/gifts).



> Dear recipient,
> 
> This is quite possibly the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written, and for that I deeply, deeply apologize.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it!

They hit the minefield twenty clicks out from base.

Olli, taking point as always, has just enough time to shout one last obscenity before his feed shorts out. Just behind him, _Koloss_  flares blue as Per and Arne activate their shields, but they’re a split second too late, and Miro’s world goes violently, blindingly white.

His entire mobile suit shakes with the impact, showering sparks everywhere as screens burst and power cords jerk loose. For a moment it’s all he can do to hang onto the controls in grim, eerie silence, watching chain reactions blossom across his HUD as he spins past. Then even his cameras fail, and Miro is left in complete and utter darkness.

“Computer,” he says, keeping his voice carefully flat. The older prototypes don’t always register commands if the pilot sounds panicky, and his is older than most. “Status report.”

Nothing. Miro rattles the controls, as if that might startle the interface awake, and tries to control his rising desperation. With the cameras dead, he might as well be trapped in a pressurized can. A moment ago he’d counted the vacuum of space a small mercy. Now he’d give anything to hear something, as long as it tells him the extent of the damage.

When the backup core finally flickers to life, a wave of sound floods the cramped cockpit, klaxons blaring from every corner. The readout on his displays might as well be from a centuries-old computer, all red light and squared-off characters, but it tells him enough. The main drive core is fried. Oxygen is low. His mobile suit must have taken hits to both arms; when he tries to move them, a fresh burst of sparks chars the side of his helmet.

The radar shows his immediate surroundings are clear of debris. Three little points of light blink up at him. One of them has to be Per, but the other two--impossible to know for sure. Whatever cloaked the minefield from them has broken up short-range communications, too. Miro reaches out instinctively, brushes his finger over the screen. They’d started out from the _Adler_ with eleven.

One thruster is still working. It has to be enough. Slowly, painstakingly, he turns _Kusel_ around, and begins the long journey back to base.

 

\---

 

“No,” says Miro.

“It wasn’t a question,” says Philipp

“Then you shouldn’t have phrased it as one. What was wrong with my old AI?”

“What was wrong with it,” says Philipp, “is it was barely an AI to begin with. Voice-activated commands? A non-integrated user interface? Be reasonable, Miro. The only reason the Federation didn’t take it away from you years ago is because they didn’t have the time, and the only reason I didn’t take it away from you after Europa is because _I_ didn’t have the time.”

“I was fine with it.”

Philipp only stares back at him, unfazed, and leans back against his desk.

So this is what it’s come to, Miro thinks wearily. Philipp had been a couple years below him in the Academy, a rising star even then. Nobody had expected him to rise quite this far.

“Look,” says Philipp. He’s speaking with his hands now, little emphatic gestures, the way he always does when he wants someone to know that he means what he says. “I know how it is. I remember the early days. The urban legends, too. It’s not like that anymore. You and I both know that.”

“It isn’t about a couple of old superstitions,” says Miro. Although, he adds in the privacy of his own mind, they all know there had been more truth to the legends than anyone had cared to admit. “It’s about my effectiveness as a pilot.”

“Old dog, new tricks,” says Philipp, and a corner of his lip twitches upward. It settles back down at Miro’s reproachful stare. “I don’t buy it. You’ve always been our best pilot, like it or not, and that isn’t going to change just because you’re going to have to share the cockpit from now on.”

He pulls the datapad off his desk, and in the lowgrav environment of the _Adler_  skims it effortlessly across the room to Miro, who waits until the last possible moment to pluck it out of the air.

“Take some time off,” says Philipp. “Read up on him. Wait for us to finish repairs on _Kusel_. I’ll let you know when he’s been installed.”

 

\---

 

Nightshift starts as Miro reaches the dormitories; the sunlights along the hallway cycle down to dim yellow, and the temperature noticeably drops a few degrees. His room is sparse, little more than a closet with enough space for a bunk and a tiny writing desk, but compared to the claustrophobia of the crew quarters it’s practically a suite. Miro tosses the datapad on the bed--it takes its sweet time falling--and sighs.

It used to be the Federation would make you run through hell and back before you were assigned your copilot. Miro was never subjected to the process personally, but he knows how it went. There were interviews and physicals and a battery of psych evals, and at the end of it they’d personally handpick a candidate for you from the neural library and lock you in a cockpit with them and a high-stress situation to make sure you were compatible. Only the best for the best, that was what they’d said.

Miro snorts. Philipp hasn’t had that luxury in--what, coming up on a year? They’ve been lucky nobody’s needed a new copilot until now; the only ones they have on file are the ones that were already logged in the ship’s systems before Europa.

He looks down at the datapad. The young man staring back at Miro has all the trappings of a Federation officer: the cap squared off exactly, the collar perfectly starched, the stripes on the shoulder crisp and gleaming. Below the photograph is his biography, the dates and qualifications as brief as the span of his life.

Flight Lieutenant Thomas Müller. Born AF 89. Enlisted AF 115, the same year the Copilot program began. Killed in action AF 116. There’s a short list of commendations, none of which Miro recognizes, but that doesn’t surprise him.

Early days, he thinks. He’d barely been out of the Academy himself. New graduates had had a bright future back then; you had to be stupid or reckless or both to want to sign up for the program.

He looks at the photograph again. The flight lieutenant isn’t smiling, but there’s a faint quirk to his lips, as if he’s a split second away from it, and his eyes--Miro peers closer--are a little mismatched, the left just a few shades bluer than the right.

 

\---

 

“I know you’re supposed to get a full day, but…” Sami runs an exasperated hand through his hair, inadvertently smudging engine oil across his forehead, and waves at the crowded hangar behind him. “Turnover is high right now. I don’t have the space for a more-or-less functioning mobile suit when there are four that still need repairs. Six hours is about the best I can do.”

Six is more than Miro was expecting; Sami must have pulled some strings. “Thanks,” he says.

Sami nods once. Then, taking a deep breath, he pulls out a dog-eared manual from his pocket, opens it to a particularly tattered page, and clears his throat.

This is the part they’ve both been dreading. Miro likes Sami. He’s a man of few words and he does his job well. But he’s Europan born and raised, pulled by Philipp from the mining crews to replace the _Adler’_ s chief mechanic. He’s proven a genius with the mobile suits and managed copilot upkeep admirably, but he isn’t Federation trained, and keeping a copilot online is completely different from installing one from scratch.

“You know the general idea of it already, so I’m not going to read it word for word.” Sami glances at him, questioning, and at Miro’s nod continues. “The neural interface is going to be barraging you with data, but it’s designed to interpret all of that data as images your brain can understand. We’ll be monitoring your vitals, as well as your level of synchronicity with the interface. Anything goes wrong, we’ll pull you out.”

He tosses Miro his helmet. It’s been modified, he notes with a sliver of distaste; a bundle of garishly-colored cables lead from the back of the helmet to a hastily rigged control panel soldered to a spare bit of wall in _Kusel_ ’s cockpit, and when he pulls it on, he winces a little at the cold press of electrodes against his temples.

“Sorry,” says Sami. “We hit a few snags trying to install your copilot. Mesut said he had a hell of a time extracting him and he was still mostly analog in the end, so he had to try a few workarounds. That’s the _Adler_ for you, I guess.”

Miro waves him off. It’s true; the _Adler_ is--or was, he supposes--one of the oldest carriers in the fleet, the kind of museum piece you send out to a striking mining colony purely as a show of force. It stands to reason its spare copilots are in similar condition.

He settles back into his seat and adjusts the fit of his helmet, giving Sami a wordless thumbs-up. Sami leans out the cockpit hatch and shouts at someone standing at another control panel--the aforementioned Mesut, perhaps. Then he returns Miro’s thumbs-up and hops backwards onto the hangar catwalk, and the world fades sharply away.

 

\---

 

It’s--green.

Miro’s been stationed on terraformed colonies before, of course, all with varying levels of vegetation--mostly low shrubs and dry fields, the kind of terrain that makes a man thirsty if he looks at it too long. But the hilltop he’s standing on now is carpeted in thick grass, stretching away from him in all directions. Above him the sky is cloudless and the breeze carries with it the smell of something unfamiliar and earthy. In the distance, just on the edge of seeing, the interface has painted a careless suggestion of forest.

“First time here?”

Miro turns. A young man is sprawled on the grass behind him. His old-fashioned flight suit is open at the neck, his hair is a little tousled by the breeze, and when he pats the ground beside him Miro finds himself taking a seat quite naturally. The grass is silky-soft under his fingers.

Flight Lieutenant Müller smiles up at him. It’s an infectious smile, charmingly crooked, and Miro finds himself smiling back. “Was this your home colony?” he says.

Müller’s grin widens. “Pretty, isn’t it? It would’ve made a good postcard. You must be my copilot.”

“Miroslav Klose,” says Miro, and there’s a spark of sudden interest in Müller’s eyes. “Pleased to meet you.”

“The pleasure’s all mine.” He dashes off a courtly bow, or something as close to one as can be managed while lying flat on his back. “It’s a decent afterlife, all things considered, but you can’t really go anywhere and there’s nobody to talk to but the horses.”

“The horses,” repeats Miro, as the unfamiliar earthy smell slots into place, and Müller laughs.

“They’re fantastic listeners but not terribly good for conversations, which in my experience have always required at least one other active participant. I think my family must’ve owned a farm when I was alive. I don’t remember.”

He sounds remarkably flippant about the whole thing, for all that he’s been dead at least twenty years. Miro is subconsciously aware that what he’s registering as flippancy isn’t, in fact, any kind of emotion at all, no more than what they’re exchanging are words, but it makes him a little uncomfortable nonetheless.

“Anyway,” says Müller, flopping bonelessly back into the grass. “What’s the Federation up to these days?”

Miro hesitates. Here, if anything, is the part where he ought to be honest--and then he remembers the spotless uniform, the list of commendations. Neither of those are here right now, and it’s hard to reconcile the young man lying next to him with the photograph back on the _Adler_. But a pilot like that would never have dreamed of launching against the Federation. Miro knows it because _he_ wouldn’t have, until Europa. Until Philipp had asked it of all of them.

“Pushing out into deep space,” he hears himself saying. “Terraforming new colonies. They need all the help they can get.”

It’s technically the truth, but it’s still a bad lie, which is why he’s so surprised when he glances at Müller out of the corner of his eye and finds him nodding thoughtfully.

“Don’t I know it,” says Müller, “if they’re hiring civilian contractors now.” He sticks out a hand. “Well, Miroslav Klose, it’s nice to know they haven’t completely forgotten about me.”

“I’m not--” Miro almost says, but then he realizes, far too late: his rank. He should’ve mentioned it to begin with-- _a_ rank, any rank--but it’s been a year now, and for all his love of order Philipp has never had much patience for formal hierarchies--

Well, there’s nothing he can do about it now, and Müller’s expression is still the same, one of cheerful acceptance. Slowly, suspiciously, Miro reaches out and shakes his hand. His palm is cool and bears all the familiar calluses of a pilot, and as Miro moves to pull away Müller hangs on, just for a moment.

“Sorry,” he says, and laughs self-consciously. “Been a while, I guess.”

Miro doesn’t know what to say to that, so he smiles a little uneasily and turns to look out at the landscape again. You never know what to expect when you’re establishing a neural link. You get all kinds of stories. Arne says he wound up in a floating nightclub with Per for a whole day, which was fun at first but got old really fast.

After a while he says, “What’s that forest down there?”

“I don’t know,” says Müller. “It’s always been there. I tried going down there once, but I couldn’t reach it. This place kept turning me around.”

“Really? Because it’s getting closer.”

He hadn’t noticed until now that he’s staring at it, really staring at it, but what he’d thought was trees in the distance is something else--something vast and dark and spiky which only gives off the appearance of a forest from a long way away. The air over it shimmers oddly, and as it races toward them Miro takes an instinctive step back, laying a hand on Müller’s shoulder.

“What _is_  it?” Müller says in a low voice. “Do you know--”

“Run,” says Miro; then, when Müller doesn’t budge, sharper: “ _Run!_ ”

It overtakes them in total silence, which might be the worst part: suddenly the sound of their footsteps on grass is strangely dulled, and the sky above them darkens and splits. Distantly, he thinks he can hear Müller shouting his name, before that, too, is torn away. Then the wave crashes over him, dragging him under, and the foundations of the world shudder and crumble--

 

\---

 

\--and hands are pulling Miro’s helmet off his head, and voices are shouting, and his head is spinning and his mouth is painfully dry, and a worried Sami is standing over him, pressing a bottle of cold water into his hands.

“Drink,” he orders, and refuses to listen to anything Miro has to say until he does.

Miro drains the bottle as quickly as he can and pushes it back at Sami, who promptly ignores it, letting it sail out of the cockpit hatch and into Mesut’s waiting arms. “Müller,” Miro manages at last, frowning at how slowly  he forms the words. “Is he--”

“He’s fine,” says Sami. He glances back at Mesut, who gives a tiny nod. “Something severed the connection suddenly, but other than that the data seems okay. Miro, are you…”

“Fine,” repeats Miro, a little more quickly than he’d intended. Sami gives him a dubious stare, but Miro meets his gaze steadily, and after a moment he shakes his head and mutters something impolite about pilots.

“Anyway,” he says, “you’re done for the day. We’ll take a look at what went on in there, and I’ll keep you updated. But I get the feeling someone didn’t want us poking around that file.”

Miro wants to argue, but his head is still spinning and his tongue feels thick in his mouth. Slowly he unbuckles his safety harness, and when Sami hands him another bottle of water, he doesn’t resist.  
  
That night he dreams of a great vastness of water churning like thunder below him, and trees crowded so thick he can’t see the sky.


	2. i promise i'm a well-intentioned explosion

“Arne says you wanted to talk to me,” says Per without preamble early the next morning.

“Yes,” says Miro, and sits up, stretching to turn up the volume on the wall-mounted speaker nearest to his bunk. “Did you get my message?”

“I did,” says Per, “and it’s all wrong.”

Miro frowns; then, remembering Per can’t see his expression, says aloud, “I’m not making it up, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“No, I don’t mean that,” says Per. “I know you’re telling the truth, but something’s not right with what Müller said. I think _he_ was lying to you.”

For a moment there’s nothing but the soft, ever-present hum of the ship’s engines, and the low buzz of conversation from the crewmembers drifting past outside.

“No,” says Miro, at last. “No--what reason would he have to lie to me?”

“I don’t know what the alternative would be.” Per doesn’t sigh, exactly, but there’s a sudden heaviness to his words. “Look--we don’t forget things. We _can’t._ Especially things we would’ve remembered clear as day when we died.”

“Like a family farm,” says Miroslav, and scrubs his hand across his face.

“You’ve heard Poldi talk about all the shit he used to pull back at the Academy, right? How he makes it sound like it happened yesterday?”

“Yes,” says Miro, slowly.

“Because for us, it pretty much did,” says Per. “And that’s the other thing--there were a couple Müllers at the Academy when I was there, but I don’t remember anyone with his face.”

“And we’d remember, with a face like that,” a second voice pipes in from the speaker. Poldi, listening in as always. Miro sighs. He should have requested a closed feed to begin with, but there’s no helping it now. “Where is he now? Can we talk to him?”

“Their neural link was interrupted,” says Per, and at Miro’s sudden intake of breath adds unapologetically, “Sorry, news got around. We gossip faster than anyone else on board. Benni said something about a virus?”

“They’re still trying to figure it out.” Miro pauses. “Although Mesut did say he was difficult to extract from the ship’s archives. Could that have had something to do with it? The code can’t degrade over time, but if it was somehow corrupted--”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that happening,” says Poldi. “But I wouldn’t rule it out.”

“I’m not convinced,” says Per. “A corrupted file could explain the gaps in his memory, but it doesn’t explain how easily he accepted Miro’s story about the Federation needing copilots for civilian contractors. That’s not the Federation we know.”

“What if--” begins Miro, but he’s interrupted by the blare of klaxons and a couple of near-simultaneous obscenities from Poldi and Per.

“Incoming from Fips,” says Per, as Miro scrambles out of bed and into his flightsuit. “Federation patrol. He doesn’t want you to sortie, but he thinks you’d better. After yesterday, we’ll need all hands on deck.”

“But the link--” begins Miro. They’ll need another two hours at least to reestablish the connection and calibrate the neural overlay. And the Federation--Müller still doesn’t know--

Per, at least, sounds unfazed. “Sami’s taken your copilot offline for now. You’ve piloted without one for years, after all.”

“See you out there, Mirek,” says Poldi, and with a short click, both AIs are gone.

 

\---

 

The new control panel is still soldered to the wall when Miro straps himself into the cockpit, but all its lights are dark, and when he pulls his helmet on, he finds the new modifications have been hastily torn out. A stray bit of wiring pokes him in the earlobe, and he grimaces, wiggling the helmet until it pops free.

When the cockpit hatch closes he takes a deep breath and lets it out, carefully, slowly. In the distance he can hear the grind and clank of machinery as the first two mobile suits are loaded into the linear catapults.

“Schweinsteiger and Podolski, _Chrysippos._ Ready to launch.”

“Friedrich and Mertesacker, _Koloss._ Ready to launch.”

A crackle, then a voice from the bridge: Sami, as calm as ever. “ _Chrysippos, Koloss,_ you are cleared for launch.”

The entire ship shudders briefly, and then the floor underneath _Kusel_ begins to rumble as the elevator begins to move, slotting the mobile suit neatly onto the maglev tracks _Chrysippos_ had occupied moments ago. In the corner of his HUD, an icon blinks green.

“Klose,” he says. “ _Kusel._ Ready to launch.”

“Neuer and Höwedes,” comes Manu’s voice from the adjacent catapult. “ _Aspis_. Ready to launch.”

“ _Kusel, Aspis_ , you are cleared for launch.”

Miro braces for it, but the acceleration presses him sharply back into his seat anyway: the catapult tunnel blurs past him, and then he’s flying into the black.

He spots the Federation patrol almost immediately: a squadron of Warner-class suits flying fast in attack formation, and directly at the _Adler_. They must have had eyes on the minefield for some time.

“We haven’t tried the sweeper variation in a while,” says Philipp. “ _Aspis,_ you take point.”

“Roger that,” says Benni. Their mobile suit is already swooping toward the Warners, its barriers down, firing wildly, the picture of a rash charge ordered by an overconfident commander.

The Warners turn as one to avoid the attack, delivering a barrage of concentrated fire that ought to put it out of commission. Then they swing back for a second round, and Miro can practically read the confusion in their pilots’ minds as _Aspis_ emerges from of the particle cloud unscathed, the beams from their rifles scattering harmlessly across its surface. Before any of them can react, a blast of energy lances through their formation, taking out three Federation suits at once-- _Chrysippos_ , thinks Miro, always good for a shot at distance--and then _Aspis_ is barreling into the rest of the formation, sending them flying in all directions.

“You couldn’t have hit more of them first?” Manu complains.

“Shaky hands,” says Basti cheerfully, “got nervous,” and then they’re closing in on the remaining Warners with deadly speed.

The Warner closest to Miro is still trying to recover when he rams it again, gritting his teeth at the force of the blow, and as it sails backward he fires his beam rifle through the cockpit at point-blank range. He pivots sharply as a second Warner rushes him, and thrusts an arm forward to halt its approach. It sideswipes him, buying enough time to draw its beam saber and slash wildly at Miro, who meets the blade of energy with one of his own. The Warner presses forward, trying to push him off-balance, but Miro activates his thrusters, and as his opponent rocks back he brings both of his particle cannons to bear on the vulnerable cockpit--

 _Kusel’s_ drive core grinds to a halt, cutting off the high whine of the particle cannons with brutal efficiency. Its arms fall limp at its sides, the beam saber clicking off like a flashlight. Miro yanks at the controls: unresponsive. The repairs--perhaps they’d been incomplete--but no, the readout across his HUD is indicating everything proceeding normally, the cameras are still online, and as he watches, frozen, the Warner rights itself, charging forward, beam saber flashing--

In his ear, Flight Lieutenant Müller says, “Why does that mobile suit have Federation markings?”

A particle beam shears through the Warner’s chassis with brutal suddenness. _Koloss_ appears in Miro’s field of vision, shoving the disabled mobile suit away an instant before it explodes.

“Close one,” crackles Arne. “Miro, are you all right? Who was that just now? What’s going on?”

Miro’s gaze swings to the silent control panel on the wall. This shouldn’t be happening. It’s impossible. They’d taken him offline--

“Miro’s fine,” says Müller. In the light of the distant explosions, the HUD readout flickers red. “He just has some explaining to do.”

 

\---

 

“I don’t know where to start,” says Miro.

Müller laughs. “I’ve found the beginning is generally the best part.”

Strangely enough, he doesn’t sound angry, only curious, in a detached sort of way. Miro thinks he might have preferred angry; he would be easier to read, then.

 _Kusel_ drifts, surrounded by mobile suits, every one of the _Adler_ ’s guns trained on it, and Miro tries to think. He’s never been anything like a storyteller: fond of listening, certainly, but once a cycle, when the rations of rotgut are passed out and the pilots are called on to brag a little, he’s always faded into the background and smiled to himself instead. This is the part where he might count on Basti or Poldi to start and give him something to work with, but Müller has severed all communications in the anticipation that his words might contain some kind of hidden message to the other pilots.

“It started about a year ago,” says Miro, at last, and Müller’s attention becomes almost palpable in the stale air. “That was when the miners’ strike began on Europa.”

“Europa,” says Müller. “Enlighten me.”

“It must have been terraformed after your time. It’s a small colony, no more than a million inhabitants, on the edge of Federation space. I can’t remember the specifics, but they were angry, and with reasonable cause. We were sent to break the strike.”

He pauses. None of the crew had been to Europa before: it had been the sort of planet that people came from, and didn’t go to. They hadn’t known what to expect; it certainly hadn’t been the kind of resistance they’d met.

“Things got--complicated,” says Miro, finally. “Federation troops on the ground finally called in an airstrike. Our captain agreed to it; the rest of us had--moral objections.”

“I heard him on your comms,” says Müller. “Philipp, was it?”

“No,” says Miro. “He was first officer at the time.”

He can practically hear Müller putting the pieces together. He wonders, in the stillness, where Ballack is now. Europa’s moons are hardly empty wastelands; he won’t have starved to death, and it had been a gracious enough marooning, in the end. He might still be there, but Miro wouldn’t put it past him to have found some means of contacting the Federation by now, either.

“We ran,” he says, after a moment. “We took as many of the miners as wanted to come with us. Philipp didn’t want to leave them behind.”

“Selfless of him,” says Müller, and Miro snorts in disbelief.

“You can call it that, if you like.”

There were a hundred reasons Philipp had sided with the miners in the end. The _Adler_ ’s state of disrepair, which wouldn’t have held up to the Europans’ commandeered flak cannons for long. The nickel-chromium superalloy that had made breaking the strike a priority. The need for crew who’d know how to electroplate that alloy onto a mobile suit. Somewhere, presumably, the goodness of his heart might have played a role, but Miro wouldn’t put money on it figuring particularly high on the list.

“So you’re fugitives,” says Müller. “All of you. And the Federation’s on your heels. I call that a pretty sad life. A short one, too, come to think of it.”

“The miners’ strike didn’t come out of nowhere,” says Miro. “There were weeks of unrest beforehand, in other sectors of Federation space. We didn’t get all the details, obviously, but we heard enough. Uprisings on border colonies, security forces throwing down their guns and walking away. Philipp decided we couldn’t have been the only ones who were done with the Federation.”

“You’re looking for other crews on the run.” He almost sounds impressed.

Miro presses his lips together. “Philipp thinks we’ll be stronger if we band together, and I’m inclined to agree with him.”

“Not if it’s been a year since your little mutiny,” says Müller. “The Federation must have rounded up most of the others by now.”

Miro shakes his head. “There’s no way to know for sure. Current Federation tech scrambles any effective long-range communication, so we have to look for potential allies the old-fashioned way. That leaves us open to attack.”

He gestures at the HUD, where the other mobile suits are still waiting, their weapons still raised. Philipp wouldn’t order them to fire without reasonable cause, but he knows the stories--they all know the stories.

“Anyway,” he says quietly, “now you know. What you do with that information is up to you. I don’t know how you managed to slip past our ground crew and hijack my mobile suit, but if you could do all that in a matter of hours and with a corrupted data core to boot, I’d like to have you on our side.”

The guess about the data core is precisely that--a guess--but judging from Müller’s sudden silence, it might be the right one. Miro resists the urge to hold his breath.

“I don’t remember,” says Müller, finally. “Any of the--the shit in my file, the medals, any of it. I know what the Federation is, I know I must’ve been to the Academy, but I can’t remember being there. You should, shouldn’t you? They’re careful about that. But it feels like someone had a rummage through my brain and just left what they thought was important.”

It’s difficult for most of the copilots to convey intense emotion when they’re not flying with their pilots. Per’s said it’s a side effect of being rendered in data: without a living, breathing conduit, you just don’t feel things as strongly. For all that Müller is supposedly offline, he sounds--frustrated, and angry, and confused, and Miro almost reaches out to put a reassuring hand on thin air before he thinks better of it.

“I don’t know who you were,” he says. “All we have is the file. But I think the Federation must’ve done something to you. Something important. They don’t want us to find out what, or why. And I think that, at least, deserves consideration.”

Müller is quiet for a moment longer. Then, suddenly, the HUD flickers green, the drive core flares to life, and what sounds like half the ship is in his ear, demanding answers.

 

\---

 

“I don’t like it,” says Philipp.

Miro sighs. “I’m not expecting you to.”

“I don’t even like the idea of him in our hangar right now.”

“He gave his word he wouldn’t try to access our mainframe--”

Philipp crosses his arms. He doesn’t shout--he never shouts--but his hands are twitching a little, like he’s resisting the urge to gesture. “And you believe him? You think he’ll limit himself to your mobile suit out of the goodness of his own heart?”

“I do,” says Miro. “Philipp, if he already has potential access to our systems, imagine what he could do if he were on our side! He already has his doubts about the Federation--”

“Because he doesn’t remember it,” says Philipp. “Imagine if we restore his memories and it turns out he was some party hardliner? That AI has the ability to take out an entire fleet, to say nothing of an antiquated relic at least two wars old.”

He isn’t wrong; suddenly, the lack of cameras and wall-mounted computers in Philipp’s quarters begins to make sense. Miro sighs, as exasperated at his foresight as anything else. “So what do you propose we do instead?”

“Besides the obvious?” Philipp shakes his head. “We can’t do that; he’d be out of the hangar the minute he suspected our intentions--or worse, he’d be in the ship. No, I’m not rejecting your idea outright, I just don’t like it, that’s all. Short of coming up with our own history for him--”

“I lied to him once,” says Miro sharply, surprising himself with his own vehemence. “That was a mistake. I’m not going to make it again.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that you do.” Philipp shrugs, apparently unruffled. “But it leaves us at an impasse, and one I can’t sustain for very long. We can’t afford to keep you grounded like this.”

A sharp knock interrupts them, and Miro turns to look over his shoulder. “Philipp?” Sami’s muffled voice at the door. “Can we have a word? It’s important.”

He enters in a grease-stained flightsuit, Mesut close at his heels. Behind them, Miro glimpses a small crowd of pilots and crewmembers, all desperately trying to appear as if they have a good excuse for loitering near the captain’s quarters, before the door slides shut again.

“What is it?” says Philipp, and Sami shoots the closed door a worried look.

“It’s the Federation mobile suits,” he says. “Well--it isn’t them, really, it’s what we pulled from them. A couple of them are still mostly intact, so we thought we’d head into the debris field to see what we could salvage.” He turns to Mesut. “Tell them what you found.”

Mesut’s eyes widen, but at Philipp’s encouraging nod, he takes a deep breath. “Some of the cockpits suffered only minor damage,” he says, not looking up. “By keeping their systems online through an auxiliary drive core, I was able to gain remote access to the Federation’s servers.”

“We thought we might be able to find something about your copilot,” adds Sami, and Mesut nods.

“I had to shut it down before they discovered me, but I had enough time to download the Academy’s rosters and the bulk of the copilot division’s correspondence from the last twenty to thirty years.” He pauses and looks to Sami, who sighs.

“What Mesut is saying is that we’ve been through the archives, all the Academy rosters, and Miro--” Sami hesitates, glances at the door again.

“Out with it,” says Miro.

Sami takes a deep breath. “Miro, he doesn’t exist.”

 


	3. you say they came and burned you down

There were stories about the start of the program. You heard--things, before the first copilots rolled out, because even if you didn’t believe them yourself, they were a good way to scare the new recruits.

They used to say there were copilots who got trapped inside the system, who were left without form or personality and were doomed to live a kind of half-life for eternity. They used to say that once a copilot got installed wrong, so when they fired up the mobile suit all he did was scream, and they couldn’t delete his file from the system because he _was_ the system, so they had to detonate the entire mobile suit with the pilot still inside. They used to say--

Well. It hadn’t mattered what they’d used to say, because Miro had never had to worry about it. He’s worrying now.

Pilots are a superstitious lot. Well-respected as he is, there’s only so much a good reputation can do in the face of the unknown. Suddenly the smiles around the ship have grown a little tighter around the corners, and these days when he enters the mess hall there’s a conspicuous lack of whispering. Their luck’s been bad enough as it is, this past year. Nobody needs it to get worse.

Müller takes the news well, or at least Miro thinks he does. His face in the link had been open, malleable. It’s harder, not being able to see his face.

“I can’t tell you whether your hacker friend is right, you know,” he says. “That kind of comes with the not being able to remember.”

“I wasn’t going to ask,” says Miro, settling back into the pilot’s seat.

Müller sounds a little surprised. “Then why else would you be here?”

Miro hesitates. He doesn’t really know what brought him back to _Kusel_ ’s cockpit, other than a misguided sense of duty and the conviction that Müller at least ought to know about his apparent lack of existence. If Philipp knew he was doing this, he thinks, he’d advise against it. Or perhaps he does know, and is simply letting it go on in the hopes that something interesting will happen.

Miro decides it doesn’t really matter. He’s still dreaming, most nights: grass, and trees, and an ocean he’s never seen. He’d ask the other pilots if that kind of thing is normal, but--

“I thought you might like someone to talk to,” he says, a little helplessly, and feels stupid as soon as he says it.

But Müller doesn’t laugh. “Even if it turns out you’re talking to nobody in the end?”

Miro remembers: a courtly bow, a too-long handshake. “Even if,” he says, and means it.

 

\---

 

He takes to spending more time in the hangar than is strictly necessary. He knows it only adds fuel to the fire, he knows it can’t look good, but somehow not visiting seems equally unthinkable. Besides, it was his mobile suit before it was ever taken over by a rogue AI. Not that he thinks of Müller that way; whatever he is, it’s become impossible to see him as anything other than another person.

So Miro talks. He tells Müller about himself: reluctantly at first; then, as Müller carefully probes, latching on, perhaps, to the details of a life he’s never lived, he talks at length about his days at the Academy, about Kusel, the colony whose name his mobile suit bears. Some part of him hopes something he says will jog Müller’s memory, bring something else to the fore: a clue, perhaps, that will give Mesut and Sami somewhere else to start. But it doesn’t come.

“The first time I talked to you, you asked me if what we were seeing was my home colony,” says Thomas one day. “I’m sure it was. But I can’t remember what it was called or anything else about it. And--” He pauses. “And I don’t think it was always there, if that makes sense.”

“What do you mean?” says Miro.

“I mean, I don’t think it was always in my memory. Time passes differently for us, but I know I remember kind of...floating, in the black, for a while. I think the farm must’ve come back to me slowly, a little at a time. And then for the longest time there was nothing but grass, and then I think I must’ve remembered the horses, too. But that doesn’t make sense, does it? That’s not supposed to happen.”

“A lot of things aren’t supposed to happen,” says Miro. “That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.”

“Either way, I figure if I wait a few centuries, some more would come floating back,” says Müller. “But I’m afraid it probably wouldn’t do any of you much good.”

Twenty years as a ghost, Miro thinks, trying to piece himself together. He can’t bring himself to believe the rumors floating around the ship, the shit about Müller pulling himself together out of nothing and giving himself some dirt-common Federation name as some kind of artificial joke. But the Federation must have done its best to erase any sign he’d ever existed for a reason. He has no doubt they’re capable of it: birth records, school diplomas, Academy rosters. What’s harder to believe is the fact that none of the copilots onboard remembered him, or knew his face. Unless….unless--

Horses, he’d said. And everything had been so _green_...

“Hm,” says Miro. In the back of his mind, he can feel an idea forming.

 

\---

 

It’s Poldi who tracks him down when the klaxons start blaring again; apparently Philipp thinks the news might be less of a blow coming from someone who hails--well, hailed--from the same colony.

“Orders are to sit this one out, Mirek,” he says, and when Miro doesn’t answer right away, he adds, awkwardly, “I mean, I don’t like it any more than you do, but--”

“It’s all right, Lukas,” says Miro.

He can feel the shock radiating from the speaker. “What?” says Poldi, after a moment.

“I have other things I can get done in the meantime,” says Miro. “Just tell me--how many is it this time?”

“A squadron. Warners again. Philipp thinks they’re here to find out what happened to the last patrol. Probably a carrier hot on their heels, too, in case it goes badly. Mirek--”

“Don’t worry,” says Miro, propelling himself down the hall. “I’ll be keeping myself busy.”

“That’s what I’m worried about!”

He finds Mesut recalibrating _Aspis_ ’s optical camouflage as Manu straps in. Around them the ground crew is already scrambling, too caught up in their tasks to pay him much attention.

“Those Federation consoles,” Miro says. “Do you still have them?”

Mesut glances up at him briefly, offers a hesitant smile. “Yes. Why?”

“I think the attack might give us the cover we need to access the Federation archives again. They’ll be too busy monitoring the fight to worry about us.”

Mesut finishes his calibrations and waves to Manu, who waves back and lowers the cockpit hatch. “You’re right about the cover, but what else is there to look for? We have everything there is to know about the copilot program.”

“From the last thirty years,” says Miro. Across from them, _Aspis_ ’s eyes blink blue as the elevator carrying it begins the ascent to the flight deck. “But not from before that. Not from the beginning of the Federation.”

Mesut looks up. Really looks up, this time, and his eyebrows furrow together in growing realization. “What are you saying?”

“I don’t think he’s from a colony,” says Miro. “I think he’s from Earth.”

 

\---

 

Philipp invites Miro to watch the battle from the bridge. It’s a short fight, even with only three mobile suits sortieing; they engage the Warners in a hit-and-run that leads them straight into the line of fire of the _Adler_ ’s main cannons, and they make quick work of the survivors after that. Even so, Mesut doesn’t call him back to the hangar for a full hour after the mobile suits have returned.

Miro doesn’t know what he’s looking at, at first: the video has the flat colors and grainy feed of a long-forgotten relic, and all the little figures running around on the screen look the same.

“It used to be a sport, from what I’ve read,” says Mesut. The camera has zoomed out again, and the little figures, some wearing red, some wearing white, race around a field with a large net on either side, passing a ball between them. And the green again--the kind of green he’s never seen before, outside of vids: an enormous plot of it, stretching for meters and meters. “You couldn’t use your hands, so you’d have to kick--”

A roar goes up from the video: one of the little red-shirted figures has broken away from a pack of men in white, and he sends the ball flying up the field, where another figure in red has suddenly appeared. As they watch, rapt with attention, he catches the ball on the side of his foot, turns on a dime, and lashes the ball at an impossible angle--

The crowd explodes. The video cuts to a closeup of the goalscorer: a lanky figure, arms raised, an exaggerated grin on his face, recognizable even at this resolution.

“That’s him,” says Miro quietly.

“The facial recognition picked him out right away,” says Mesut. “It has to be more than a hundred years old.”

Pre-Federation, then--but just barely. Miro stares at the replay. Müller runs like Miro imagines he would, all gangling arms and legs. But when he pivots he almost seems to stand on thin air, and he isn’t even looking at the net when he strikes.

“He would’ve made a good pilot,” he says, and Mesut nods.

“Well, now we know who he was, even if we still don’t know why he’s in your mobile suit,” says Mesut. “I’m sorry I couldn’t find more--”

“Don’t,” says Miro. “This is already more than we had.”

“Not enough to pull off a complete neural link,” says Mesut. Then he pauses. Rewinds the clip, watches it through, and rewinds it again.

“What are you looking for?” says Miro.

Mesut shakes his head. “Not for,” he says. “At.”

Miro watches the clip again. There’s nothing he can see that’s different. Müller’s goal doesn’t get any less impressive on repeated viewings, even with a barely rudimentary knowledge of the rules of the sport. Again he turns on thin air; again he lifts his arms, whooping, his entire face alight--

“ _Oh_ ,” says Miro.

“He must have remembered all of it when he was alive,” says Mesut. “The crowd, the lights, the adrenaline. You said pieces of his memory were coming back a little at a time. If we can find a way to accelerate the process--”

“--he might remember all of it,” says Miro. “You’re saying this could be--some kind of catalyst.”

He can feel Mesut sizing him up now. Pilots are a conduit for their copilots’ emotions, he thinks. It’s one thing to establish a link with a known entity, but if this is successful--if Müller remembers everything, the whole of his life, all in the span of a few seconds--if _Miro_ remembers it--

“I can reverse the initial flow of information,” says Mesut. “You’d be the one setting up this, um, football pitch for him. But after that…”

“I’ll do it,” says Miro.

He expects Mesut to protest, maybe offer up a few half-hearted arguments about his safety. But he doesn’t. He just smiles a little knowingly, bends over the console, and starts to type.

 

\---

 

“What are the risks?” demands Müller.

“Müller--”

“And don’t lie to me,” says Müller. “I’ll be able to tell if you do. This thing has your vitals on a constant readout, did you know? It’s kind of dark, actually--do they expect me to take over if something happens to you? Like some kind of morbid puppeteer--”

“I won’t,” says Miro, sharply enough that Müller pauses, and adds: “Lie, I mean. Not anymore.”

“Well,” says Müller, a little mollified. “Good. Now tell me the risks.”

“I don’t know,” says Miro. “Nobody does. Müller, what Mesut is proposing--it’s probably never been done before. Certainly never with the kind of technology we have lying around.”

“That wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear,” says Müller. “No, don’t say anything--I know what you’ll say, ‘Ehem, but you asked for the truth, ehm ehm.’”

“I don’t--” begins Miro, and then clicks his jaws shut, refusing to take the bait. Müller laughs.

“I’d wish you’d at least tell me what you found,” he mock-grumbles. “What if it’s a memory I’d rather you weren’t privy to? What if it’s a memory I’d rather I’d forgotten? What if I’m naked?”

“Müller,” says Miro, with infinite dryness, “this plan would not have been on the books if I had seen you naked.”

“Oh, so it’s like that? You may as well call me Thomas, by the way,” says Müller, and laughs again. “And for god’s sake stop using _Sie_. There’s nothing terribly formal about any of this; I ought to know.”

Miro snorts despite himself. “Thomas, then,” he says. “Well. Are you agreed?”

“I’d rather not be the cause of your death, considering your little tyrant of a captain is sure to order mine as a direct result, but you sound as if your mind’s been made up.”

“It is,” says Miro, and is a little surprised at the conviction in his own voice.

Silence--a long one, this time, long enough that Miro begins to shift a little in his seat.

“Then I’ll be gracious enough to not ask you why,” says Thomas at last, something odd in his voice. “And--Miro?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” says Thomas, quietly, and clicks off.

For the first time in a long time, the pitch-black of the idling cockpit is almost comforting. Miro sits in the darkness for what seems like an eternity after that, and smiles.


	4. today we give ourselves to the fire

“Remember,” says Sami. “We only have one shot at this.”

“I want all of you to know,” says Philipp, “that I am categorically against this course of action, but as I have been overruled by a majority vote, I have chosen to cede to the crew.”

“Your objection has been noted,” says Miro, and Philipp sighs.

“Come back in one piece, Miro,” he says, smiling resignedly at him. “That’s my only order.”

Miro slides the helmet on. In the instant before the neural link takes hold, he thinks he can hear klaxons.

 

\---

 

It’s green.

They’re standing in the middle of what seems like a vast field of grass, enclosed on all sides by four equally vast walls. The sound that rises from them is as deafening as it is unintelligible, accompanied by a drumbeat that shakes the ground. There must be people out there, in the stands, but Miro can only see an ocean of red and white, and enormous flags bobbing up and down like buoys. The floodlights block out everything else.

Thomas is standing a short distance away. He’s no longer wearing his flightsuit: instead he’s in the uniform Miro saw in the video, the details shifting red-white-red under his hands. For a moment he stares down at the colors, a frown slowly creasing his face, and runs a finger over the nondescript crest.

“What is--” he says, and stops. “Miro, what is this?”

“Mesut found it,” says Miro. “I’m sorry if I got the details wrong. There was only the one clip.”

Thomas shifts uneasily, lifting a leg to rub awkwardly at his high-pulled socks. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

Miro doesn’t respond. He can’t give Thomas too much to go on; besides, even if he tried, what extra information would there be to give? ‘Don’t use your hands?’

Instead he turns to look at the rest of the field. White lines have been drawn on it, splitting it into two even halves. On their side, a few more men in red are standing, talking quietly amongst themselves. Incredibly, Miro finds he recognizes all of them: there’s Basti, in close conversation with Philipp, and as his eyes skim over the other players they fall on a face he’s only seen in photographs.

Well, it would make sense, he thinks vaguely, as Poldi looks up and winks broadly at him. He wouldn’t know who Thomas’s original teammates were, and anyway the neural link is supposed to fill in the details with what’s already in his mind. And if it’s all supposed to mean something else, in terms of data--well. It makes sense, that’s all.

Behind him, Thomas says, “Wait.”

Miro turns. Thomas is frowning again, but this time his expression looks a little clearer.

“There aren’t enough people on the pitch,” he says, and a couple more red shirts wink into existence. “And you’ve forgotten the corner flags--”

“You remember?” says Miro. Under his feet the grass lengthens and whispers. Banners begin to unfurl across the stands, bearing words he knows the definitions of but not the meanings. The crowd grows impossibly louder, the noise coalescing, slowly, into the beginnings of a song, its lyrics still indistinct.

“No,” says Thomas. “But it feels right like this. Well, almost right.”

He pivots sharply on his heel. Watches the other half of the stadium turn mostly white, listens to the sound of their chants take on a sharper, angrier tone. Someone at the far end of the pitch hurls a flare: it lands sputtering on the grass a few feet away, sending up smoke and sparks.

“That’s more like it,” says Thomas happily, and bends to pull the shinpads off his legs.

Somewhere a whistle blows, and before Miro can react Thomas is sprinting forward, an enormous smile on his face.

He’s seen him smile before, but not like this, never like this: not with the grass flying under him, the roar of the crowd at his back like a heartbeat. Suddenly there’s a ball at his feet, and Thomas barely even looks at it before he whips it to Miro, and if Thomas knows precisely what to do with it, that means Miro--

A white-shirted figure comes clattering in, studs flashing, and Miro jumps without thinking, barely clearing the other man and landing lightly on the other side, but the ball is gone--he looks--the other team has regained possession--

“Come on!” shouts Thomas, and even as Miro tracks back to assist the defense he can feel the rightness of the words settle into his brain, smoothly, like they’ve always been there. When he looks down the colors of his jersey are resolving, like an invisible hand has turned up the focus. Thomas was right--this feels _good_ , feels _natural_. It isn’t the same as remembering, not yet, but it’s pretty damn close.

Their opponents win a corner, but Thomas hums thoughtfully, and suddenly Manu is there, punching the ball away. It lands perfectly at Basti’s feet, and then they’re off again, on the break, charging up the field like--well, like they’re flying in formation, and that feels right, too.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to use your hands!” he calls, and Thomas just laughs in response.

It happens soon after that. Basti passes the ball to Poldi, who sends a neat cross upfield, and as soon as Miro takes it up he finds himself surrounded by three white-shirted players. He could shoot from this range, he knows he could, but a fourth player, in bright colors-- _keeper_ , Thomas’s mind supplies--is rushing straight at him, and some instinctive, newly-awakened part of his brain knows immediately what to do.

Thomas catches the pass on the inside of one foot at the very edge of the pitch. He barely glances up--turns on nothing--sets his jaw, his face set in concentration-- _strikes--_

The ball seems to move in slow motion. It drifts past the near post, past a helpless defender, past the keeper’s outstretched fingers--and bounces, abruptly, off the crossbar.

“No,” says Miro involuntarily, as the keeper runs to collect the ball, as a small army of white-shirted players tumble into the box a fraction of a second too late. “No--wait, this isn’t--”

But Thomas isn’t looking at him, or at the goal. He’s still standing at the edge of the pitch, staring wordlessly at the furious crowd. He doesn’t move when Miro comes up to him.

“It wasn’t supposed to--” begins Miro, and then tries again: “Thomas, I _saw_ you, I saw it...”

“Yes,” says Thomas, faintly. “Yes, it did go in, didn’t it?”

Miro realizes with a start that he’s smiling again. Thomas reaches up, grabs Miro’s arms, heedless of play starting again behind them, and this time Miro feels it--feels the same shock Thomas feels, when he touches someone else. He breathes in once, sharply.

“Yes,” repeats Thomas, and squeezes Miro’s arms just once, briefly, before he pulls Miro into a hug so tight Miro gasps aloud from the force of the contact, the sheer strength of the emotion. “I remember,” he says, low, in Miro’s ear, “I _remember_ \--”

\--and Miro remembers, too: remembers the thundering pulse of the crowd, how they’d leapt to their feet, how they’d sung his name until the stadium trembled--

“I remember,” says Thomas. He pulls back a little, lets go of one arm to trace the outline of the crest on his chest, and under his fingers the fabric shimmers, turns white and blue and red, little stars flickering into existence like fireworks. And Miro knows, abruptly, with a sudden clarity, remembers at the same speed he does: the wars had come after that, had come with a ferocity nobody had expected, and one day the Federation had come to him, standing in the rubble of his city, and said--

“They said it was some kind of sleep study,” says Thomas. “They said they were there to help. What the hell did I know? I barely even knew who was fighting who. And something must’ve gone wrong...”

“...and the Federation’s first attempt at the copilot program was swept neatly under the rug,” says Miro. “And nobody ever knew about it. Not even you.”

“I hopped,” says Thomas. “From ship to ship. I don’t think I thought about it, really, it just happened. I must’ve been onboard the first to leave the system. And from there…”

Over a century, Mesut had said. He’d thought spending twenty years alone, reassembling the scattered pieces of himself, would have been eternity enough. But a century of memories--a century of memories somehow kept at bay from flooding Miro’s own mind, even as they return to Thomas’s. Miro looks at him, wondering.

Together, they turn to face the stands. Around them the stadium shudders. The sky darkens, clouds roiling over the open roof, and suddenly the crowd is a flood, is an ocean, a spiky mass of barely-human shapes pouring over the seats, over the grass, towards them.

“Thomas,” says Miro.

“I know,” says Thomas, and smiles.

They ought to run, thinks Miro, the memory of what happened last time still clear in his head. But Thomas is still holding one of his arms tightly, still grinning, and before Miro can move the wave is on them in a great soundless rush--

 

\---

 

They open their eyes.

Sami’s hand is still frozen in midair, half pulled back. Philipp is still standing behind him, his mouth open. Then time snaps back into place, and along with it a flood of sound: the blare of klaxons, the far-off shouting of the ground crew as they hurry to their stations.

“--found us faster than I thought,” Philipp is saying. “Just what I need. Per, how many is it this time?”

“Too many for three mobile suits to deal with,” is the immediate response. “Fips, they’ve brought two carriers with them.”

“Does someone want to tell me how they got the drop on us?” says Philipp. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter now. Sami, how fast can you get the slingshot ready?”

“Fifteen minutes,” says Sami, pushing back and reaching for an oil-stained cloth to wipe his hands.

“We don’t have fifteen minutes, we have five.” Philipp is already almost out of the hangar. “Someone keep me updated on Miro’s status. Per, tell the others you’re all clear to launch as soon as you’re ready.”

“ _Kusel_ ,” says Miro (says Thomas). “Ready to launch.”

Philipp nearly trips over the threshold.

Sami smiles. It’s a slow, hesitant smile, one that grows unstoppably into a grin. “Clear to launch,” he says, and Miro (Thomas) grins back.

 

\---

 

The elevator rumbles dully under them as they’re lowered into position.

Everything feels different now, in a million subtle ways. The constant stream of data scrolling across the HUD is suddenly crystal-clear, the information processing faster than they can consciously follow. They feel--lighter, almost, like there’s more room to breathe. To think. They sweep out of the catapult tunnel and straight into maneuvers, and even the mobile suit handles smoother, cleaner, responding immediately to the slightest touch.

 _You gave_ Kusel _a tune-up_ , says Miro, almost accusingly. Thomas chuckles warm and bright inside his head, and the emotion fills him up until he’s smiling, too.

_Call it an apology for fucking up everything else._

Miro’s served on Federation carriers before--not derelicts like the _Adler_ , but brand new first-rates, like the ones looming in front of them now, all cold, burnished metal, like knives shearing through space. He can practically smell the disinfectant, hear the click of boots on tile. They’ll be well-armed, to say nothing of the mobile suits they’re transporting. Even as the thought comes, they can see a squadron launching from the nearest carrier: five units they don’t recognize, moving together at full speed.

“We see them,” says Thomas aloud, and before Miro can react, he’s taken over the controls, overclocked the drive core, and pointed _Kusel_ straight at them.

It’s not any maneuver Miro’s learned before. It’s certainly nothing like what he saw on the pitch, in both their minds. But it reminds him of that, just a little, in the same way it reminds him of a dance. The Federation squadron has just enough time to let off a round of shots that spin uselessly away into the dark, and then _Kusel_ is among them, between them, taking up all the spaces it shouldn’t, parrying one mobile suit’s beam saber with another’s torso, spiraling away from them only to come at them again from above. It isn’t until after Miro and Thomas fly clear of the explosions, leaving ribbons of metal in their wake, that Miro realizes they haven’t fired a single shot.

And now the Federation carrier has brought all its guns to bear on them, and Miro can feel Thomas’s grin widen in his (their) mind. If he had knuckles, he’s sure he would be cracking them. Their radar pings, and they can hear whooping over the comms: Manu and Basti have both launched, breaking away towards the other carrier. By the time the Federation cannons fire, Basti’s dropped below the belly of the ship and is dragging his beam saber through the plates of reinforced alloy that line it.

 _It won’t be enough to stop them,_  says Thomas.

 _It’ll be enough to slow them down,_ says Miro. _Come on. We have the other ship._

The Federation carrier’s used the cannons as cover to get another squadron out, but Arne has launched by now, and as the Federation suits turn to deal with _Kusel_ he and Per come at them swinging hard and fast enough to disrupt their formation. _Kusel_ banks sharply and swings into the space between the two carriers, using each of them as a shield for the other’s guns as more Federation mobile suits begin to fill the air.

“Getting a little hot in here,” says Manu.

“Almost there,” says Miro.

They fly. They’re closer to the second carrier now, close enough that the smaller guns have started taking potshots at them, but _Kusel_ barely alters its course: a minuscule adjustment here, another there, and the beams pass harmlessly overhead, so close they can practically taste ozone.

 _I can make the jump from here,_ says Thomas, and at Miro’s silent agreement--stretches.

It doesn’t feel like anything they have the words for. Maybe if there were a part of their mind they could project, while still feeling attached to it--Thomas _reaches_ into the Federation carrier’s drive core, like a cat putting a paw into a box of yarn: sinks his claws into it, and tears up and away, and all eighty thousand tons of carbon and steel grinds to a halt with a deafening absence of sound.

The guns die out all at once, lights all along the sides of the ship shutting off in unison. They can see a squadron stalled on the flightdeck, firing at them in vain as the maglev track breaks down. The mobile suits circling the ship are already hovering in a frightened, confused mob, bewildered by the sudden radio silence.

 _Now for the other one,_ says Thomas. But Sami’s voice is in their ear, calling them back, and as one they break away from the carriers, leaving scattered wreckage behind them.

 _Kusel_ is the last to land. The slingshot activates as soon as they’re in, the entire ship trembling with the effort of holding itself together. Behind them, the remaining carrier glows blue as it tries to lock onto them--but something’s wrong there, too, and the last thing they see before the slingshot engulfs them is the Federation carrier crumpling to pieces, light spilling from the hole in its belly.

 

\---

 

There’s a moment of silence, as if nobody can believe what just happened.

Then the airwaves explode with cheers--the pilots, the copilots--the ground crew--and congratulations suddenly flood in from all sides.  _We did it,_ says Thomas, and even underneath the sheer relief of the thought there’s a strain of unmistakable arrogance. _We did it, we did it--_

His joy is Miro’s joy, is Thomas’s joy, is Miro’s joy again, and the continuous feedback of it is so overwhelming Miro can’t think straight: he reaches out, finds there’s nothing to touch, and pats blindly at the console instead. He can see Thomas’s smile in his mind, the unrestrained laughter stretching his mouth wide, until all his teeth are showing, and he smiles helplessly in return, smiles until he thinks he might burst.

The stars blur. The wreckage of the ships fades. They leave the system far behind, and as one they look to the next.


	5. epilogue

The ship hangs in the middle of the asteroid field, motionless, imposing even at a distance. It’s not a derelict; even from here, Thomas can pick up heat signatures and trace CO2 and all the myriad little signs of life that speak to a well maintained vessel.

But it isn’t Federation. It might have been, once: as they draw nearer, keeping their airwaves open, they can see where a skilled hand might have blacked out the ship name, the serial number. Now there’s nothing but a stylized crest on the starboard bow, impossible to make out clearly. Pirates, Philipp had guessed. But they’ll take allies where they can get them, these days.

A notification pops up: a message from the unknown ship, requesting permission for open video channels. A unexpected sign of good faith. Miro blinks, a little thrown off guard.

 _Miro--_ says Thomas.

_Yes._

The man who appears on the HUD is lounging in a captain’s chair, a spotless cravat tied neatly about his throat, an enormous greatcoat thrown over his shoulders. His face is worn, stubbled, and heavily scarred, and split by a thick black cloth which hides one eye and the worst of the scarring from view. But it bears an expression of no particular ill will, and as Thomas opens up their own video channel, it splits into a grin that lends the man’s entire countenance a roguishly handsome air.

“That’s more like it!” he says, clapping his hands. “I never liked audio transmissions; too damn hard to read another man’s intentions--” Then he stops short, his single eye widening ludicrously. “ _Klose?_ ”

Miro’s breath catches in his throat as recognition finally strikes. “Buffon,” he says warily, over Thomas’s colorful and multisyllabic reaction.

“It _is_ you!” exclaims Buffon, and the screen is suddenly obscured by a gloved fist as he apparently swings it excitedly at the air. “Look at you, flying without colors! The devil are you doing out here?”

“Miro,” says Thomas, aloud, because mental questions are getting him nowhere. “Miro, who the fuck is this?”

“We fought together once,” says Miro, after a moment.

“Against each other, more like,” says Buffon cheerily and with no apparent sign of remorse. “And as I recall I sent all of you home with your tails tucked between your legs. So you’ve come to your senses since then? Left the Federation for good, have you?”

Miro winces. There’s really no good response to that. “What happened to your eye?”

“Ah, well.” Buffon leans back, clearly pleased with himself. “Now that’s a tale that needs good wine and good company to tell. You’ll come and visit, won’t you? It sounds as if you’ve got some stories of your own.”

 

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes:  
> -Title and chapter titles are all from _Light Chasers_ by Cloud Cult, which was my main soundtrack while writing this.  
>  -Thanks to Imk, Sabs, and Shaz for holding my butt through my first fic with an actual plot.


End file.
